Learn to Condemn Light
by HermioneGirl96
Summary: Mycroft's motto is "What ordinary people think doesn't matter." He tries to instill this worldview in Sherlock, but it never quite sticks. A series of short vignettes following Sherlock from early childhood to after he meets John, all connected to Mycroft's insistence that ordinary people's opinions are irrelevant. Canon-compliant for series one but not the rest. T for drug use.


**Disclaimer: I don't own Sherlock or anyone else in his life, no matter how much I'd like some Benedict Cumberbatch in my life.**

 **A/N 1: I wrote this several years ago. I think I hoped to edit it some more and add more vignettes. Well, the editing happened a little bit and the additions happened not at all, but I feel pretty good about the story so I'm posting it anyway.**

 **A/N 2: This was betaed by allegrafp, and it would be better had I taken more of her suggestions. (She's one of my best friends, and "it would be better had I taken more of her suggestions" quite possibly describes much of my life.)**

 _Hark, you shadows that in darkness dwell_

 _Learn to condemn light_

 _Happy, happy, they that in hell_

 _Feel not the world's despite_

—"Flow, My Tears," by John Dowland

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The woman stopped the car abruptly, slamming on the breaks, and jerked the control into park. In disjointed motions, she got out of the car, opened the rear door, and unbuckled Sherlock's seatbelt. As soon as the dark-haired child had clambered out of the vehicle, the woman got back into the driver's seat and drove away, not walking the little boy to the door or even waiting to ensure that he made it into the house without incident.

Sherlock trotted around to the back of the house, gave himself a running start, charged through the begonias, and jumped. His fingertips managed to catch the bottom of the windowsill, and his feet scrabbled at the bricks until he got up the momentum to push himself up and onto the ledge. The boy felt his trousers tear as he swung his legs onto the windowsill, but there was nothing he could do about that, so he just kicked his feet into the room and let himself drop.

"You're home early," Mycroft commented dryly without looking up from his book.

"She cawwed me _bad_ ," Sherlock replied, his voice catching.

Mycroft put a finger in his book and turned to face his brother. "Who?"

"Wobeht's mum."

"Why?"

"Wobeht was teasing me foh stiww weawing a diapeh, an' then I said that he stiww sucks his thumb, an' he said no he doesn', an' so I said that his thumb was aww winkwy an' that means it was wet, but his otheh fingehs wewen't winkwy so it was just his thumb that was wet, so bawance of pwobabiwity says he was sucking his thumb, not sticking it in wateh. An' then Wobeht hit me, so I hit 'im back, an' then he went cwying to his mummy an' she dwove me home an' cawwed me bad." Sherlock rubbed his small, fat fist against his eye and it came back wet, reflecting the light from Mycroft's lamp.

"This bothers you."

"She cawwed me bad!"

"Sherlock." There was a slight softness in Mycroft's stern tone. "How would we classify such a woman as Robert's mother?"

"Ohdinawy."

"And what do we say about ordinary people who disagree with us?"

"They'eh _wong_."

"And do you agree with Robert's mum that you're bad?"

" . . . No."

"So then . . . ?"

"She's wong."

"And?"

"I don't have to wisten to heh."

"Exactly. What ordinary people think doesn't _matter_."

Sherlock rubbed his eyes again. His fist came away dry this time. "Thanks, Mycwoff."

Mycroft flipped his book open again. "But seriously, Sherlock, you ought to consider toilet training. You're nearly three and a half now."

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Starting at Eton was hard. Sherlock hated to admit it, even to himself, and he would have denied the fact vehemently if anyone had asked, but it was true. Leaving home for boarding school was difficult. Mycroft had warned him before going back to Oxford, and Sherlock had certainly denied it then. But unfortunately for the youngest Holmes, when he said, "I won't get homesick," what he really meant was, "I hope I won't get homesick," and when he said, "I don't care what anyone thinks," he really meant, "I wish I didn't care what anyone thinks." Because, in spite of Mycroft's careful tutelage, Sherlock had not fully learned to discount what everyone else said.

This probably had something to do with Mycroft's move to Eton when Sherlock was only six. Sherlock had conflicting ideas about whom to blame on that count. At times he cursed Mycroft for leaving; other times, he resented his parents for sending Mycroft away. More often than Sherlock cared to admit, he blamed himself for not learning fast enough before Mycroft left home. But self-loathing was an uncomfortable emotion and one that Sherlock avoided when at all possible, so usually he wound up transferring his anger back in Mycroft's direction.

Regardless of whose fault it was, the result was the same: Sherlock had arrived at Eton mere hours ago and was having a dreadful go of it already.

Sherlock's roommate, William, pushed open the door to the dorm and entered. Sherlock didn't look up from the copper sulfate he was carefully pouring into a graduated cylinder, but his ears provided him with plenty of data nonetheless. Ordinary people always failed to appreciate how much their breathing and footsteps revealed about them.

 _Footballer. Just in from a pickup game. Three-on-three. No, four-on-four. Took a kick to the shin—not malicious; accidental. Asthmatic. Exercise-induced. Hasn't taken his inhaler yet—proud._

Sherlock had already deduced this much from the slight unevenness in William's step, the way one foot slapped the ground harder than the other, the way one foot dragged a bit and scraped the floor as William lifted it, and the roughness of William's breathing when the slower boy finally registered Sherlock's existence. "Oh. Hullo, there. You must be William. I'm William, too."

Sherlock spared a glance from his graduated cylinder, briefly. William was short and slight, with blond hair and currently flushed cheeks. He was wearing football shorts and a breathable T-shirt, both prominently displaying the trademark of the highest-priced athletic clothing manufacturer in Britain. The shorts lacked the tiny, telltale hole left by removing the retail tag, so they had never been sold. A gift from the manufacturer, then. And given the shape of William's nose and the projection of his brow, his father had to be . . . ah. Of course.

Staring at his own right hand, which was lowering an ill-gotten stainless-steel knife slowly into the graduated cylinder half full of copper sulfate, Sherlock said, "I'm not William."

"Are you sure you've got the right room, then? I know _I_ have, and I got a letter before the start of term saying that my roommate would be William Holmes."

"William Sherlock Scott Holmes. I go by Sherlock."

Sherlock heard William flop onto the lower bunk. "Weird." There was a pause. "Maybe it's for the best. This way everyone won't be getting us confused."

"I doubt there was any danger of that."

"We don't look alike; that's true. You're tall with dark hair and I'm short with light hair, so I'm guessing people would be able to tell if they'd got the right William or not straightaway." Sherlock could hear William sitting up on the bed. "You know what's stupid?"

"You."

"Sorry, what?"

"You heard me."

"No, I really didn't, actually, but that's all right. I was _going_ to say, it's stupid that we don't have televisions in our rooms. I mean, our parents are paying thousands of pounds per term for us to come here; the least they could do is give us tellies."

"The _least_ they could do is give us some sulfuric acid." Sherlock was holding a thin piece of copper and the handle of the knife between the fingers of his left hand while he wound wires around both objects with his right hand.

"What are you _doing_ , anyway?"

"Electroplating a knife," Sherlock answered, stabbing the ends of both wires into a potato he'd nicked from the school kitchens. _Wasn't it obvious?_

"Electro-what?"

"Electroplating."

"That's not a plate; it's a knife."

"You're an idiot."

William gasped, and then the dorm was silent for a moment. Finally, William said, "No I'm not. I was top of my class all through primary school."

Sherlock snorted. "Doesn't matter."

"Yes, it does! You're one to talk, anyway. What are you playing at, doing a science experiment in the dorm? Something could blow up! Someone could get _hurt_!"

"Unlikely."

William stood and retreated to the door. "I know what _you_ are! You're a _freak_!" He exited, turning out the lights and slamming the door after him for good measure.

"What ordinary people think doesn't _matter_ ," Sherlock muttered to remind himself, but, sitting in the dark, he still felt _off_ somehow. His brain ran through a list of possible explanations for this for several moments before settling on one that seemed to fit: While William had been present, he'd had someone to be smarter _than_. And he may have just permanently lost that opportunity, at least where rooming arrangements were concerned.

"What ordinary people think doesn't matter," Sherlock repeated. He dissembled his experiment by feel in the darkness and used the knife to cut the potato into cubes. This done, he stick a cube into his mouth experimentally.

Raw potato tasted a lot like loneliness.

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Most people tried to hide their reactions, but there wasn't much that could be hidden from Sherlock Holmes. By now most of Eton knew that Sherlock shot cocaine, and Sherlock had very little trouble figuring out what the general populace thought of the habit. He caught the quick, sly glances between friends; the averted eyes; the determined downward stares; and the abrupt, overdone acts of having just remembered that one had forgotten something. Over half the student body was either avoiding or ignoring him. Others, of course, were jealous, and a couple even asked to join him. But even those people had contempt (or worse, desperation) hidden beneath their feigned cool, and Sherlock wanted nothing to do with them.

Occasionally there were snide whispers, and once in a while either taunts or insults to his face. _Druggie. Stoner. Addict. Idiot. Wasted_. Sherlock wasn't exactly _bothered_ by these names and the profanity that typically accompanied them, but he found the encounters involving the epithets tiresome and redundant. After all, Sherlock already knew everything his detractors might say about him; it was a waste of time to actually have to hear it.

Whenever he could, Sherlock slipped away from the idiotic, pulsating mass of humanity that constituted Eton. He never went far; the tool shed corresponding to the farthest greenhouse was only an eight-minute walk from his dorm and nearly always deserted; the lock was a joke that had fallen victim to a bit of wire with barely a complaint and had since been discarded. What he did after shutting himself inside and sinking into the near-total darkness varied depending on his mood. Sometimes he just smoked, now pacing, now sagging against the door frame. Other times, when he needed to or wanted to or got too bored and could be bothered to plan ahead, he stole his roommate's shoelaces and used them to bind his arm while he injected himself with his seven percent cocaine solution.

Light hurt after times like that, so much so that Sherlock tended not to leave the shed until hours after the high faded. He was never sure why he left the shed at all, really. He wasn't hungry, or lonely, and returning to school would hardly make him less bored. Yet somehow he always went, wading back into a world of light and sound and insufferable people, most of whom hated him just as much as he hated them.

Not that what ordinary people thought _mattered_ , of course. But if was nicest when he had a syringe to help him keep his distance from that sort of thought.

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Sherlock had been playing violin for two hours when Mycroft entered 221B without knocking.

Sherlock finished the piece—a concerto with two remaining movements—before setting down his violin with a heavy sigh. "You're disturbing my peace."

"You're playing violin at top volume at four in the morning. I was not under the impression that there was any peace left to disturb."

"Your silent presence is more disturbing than my violin concertos could ever be."

"You worry me, brother dear," said Mycroft as if the preceding exchange had gone entirely differently.

"Oh?"

"John leaves in a huff and you play minor-key concertos you don't even like? Yes, you worry me. But then, you never did learn, did you?"

Sherlock clenched his hands into fists. "John isn't ordinary."

"He dates insipid women. He watches plotless television programmes and finds them genuinely entertaining. He—"

"Some people without great brilliance have the useful quality of inspiring it in others."

"You've found a helpmeet."

"And if I have?"

"He's pulling you down, Sherlock. You've started thinking that his opinions matter, and you handle his strops badly, as if they reflect on _you_."

"Well, perhaps they do! Maybe I'm doing something wrong!"

"Anyone who refuses to be toilet-trained until the age of four is doing something wrong, and will always be doing something wrong. But John's a romantic, an idealist—his vision of the world is completely ridiculous, peopled as it is with 'heroes' and 'villains.'" Mycroft drew air quotes with his fingers, every movement dripping disdain. "It's not your fault you don't measure up to his naive expectations."

"John's not naive—he was in a bloody war!"

"He was a doctor!"

"He had bad days!"

"And _that's_ what makes his opinion worthwhile?" Mycroft tapped his foot.

"John Watson is a wise and decent specimen of humanity."

"Nevertheless, he is eminently ordinary."

"He is extraordinarily good. Notwithstanding the fact that he has an unusual addiction to danger, is abnormally short for a grown man, and deviates from the mean in any number of other ways."

"Everyone deviates from the mean, Sherlock. Next you'll be engaging in self-reflection because the person who told you off was asthmatic, or over six-foot-four, or—"

"But John _knows_ me."

"Ordinary people don't know anything, not the way we do!"

"But John isn't ordinary!" Sherlock stabbed his bow in the air.

"Why not? Because he deviates from the mean?"

"Because he is extraordinarily good! Because he actually has a moral compass—one that I'd trust!"

Mycroft snorted. "Morals. How—pedestrian of you."

Sherlock narrowed his eyes. "You're inhuman."

Mycroft spread his arms expansively. "Look where it's gotten me, brother mine."

"Perpetually dieting and confined to a desk job? I see little to envy."

"My philosophy has given me my equilibrium. When you throw away my philosophy, you invite in nights like this, nights of anger and sadness and anxiety and an unproductively churning brain. You would have done better to learn the worldview I tried to instill in you when we were small—what ordinary people think doesn't matter."

Sherlock opened the door to 221B and waved Mycroft out of the flat. "It's nights like this that prove to me that I'm human. That I'm still alive." With that, he slammed the door in his brother's face.

 **A/N 3: Favorites and reviews are lovely!**


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